Art Practice Commons^™

Detritus In Situ, Ariel R. Lavery

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis paper explores some of the cultural phenomena that influence my conceptual framework and describes the logic behind the formal decision-making that defines my work. Beginning with a description of the nature of the materials and environments I appropriate, this thesis aims to deconstruct the layered system of binaries that build the logic behind my work. The concerns in my work circulate around domestic consumption and the objects detritus, a term coined in the paper, that are produced as a result. However, rather than allow the objects detritus to remain cast-aways of a culture of excess, my work …

Firing The Canon, John M. Byrd

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Firing the Canon is written in conjunction with is namesake exhibition, prepared as a culmination of work leading to the master of fine arts degree. In an attempt to help viewers better understand my body of work, I discuss herein: events contributing to my personal narrative, major themes and their origins and pertinent sources of artistic and non-artistic inspiration.

Walks To Nowhere, Lauren Pleveich

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This essay is an academic justification for a means of producing images explained mainly through ideas of experiential memory.

Corporeal Thresholds, Caroline Valites

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This text is a written articulation of my MFA thesis show entitled Corporeal Thresholds. It aims to share the poignant moments that inspired the work and contextualizes my practice within the framework of metaphysics and the phenomenology of perception. Specific topics include the body and the visceral, doubt and certainty, love and loss, and the defining spaces that influence our lives.

One Breath/ One Line, Theresa Antonellis

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The scale of the body, the accretion of marks, the pace of the breath and a list of rules, underlie the work. These are parts of the process. I give myself over to the process. The drawing is evidence of the process. During process, there is constant struggle for dominance between the points of attention. Limitations of the body, habits of the mind, observation of the breath, and action of drawing compete for dominance. When are equal, the state of meditation arises. To me this is ultimate freedom. The intention is the viewer will also find freedom in contemplative viewing …

The End Of Histories, Joshua Field

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This M.F.A. thesis paper and exhibition explore the ephemerality of relationships as they are redefined by contiguity and recontextualization. My work derives from an investigation of alternative interpretive structures while retaining an overarching sense of narrative. This approach to painting relies on the human propensity to create organization in order to contend with chaos or overwhelming amounts of information. Traced back to curiosity cabinets or wunderkammers and forward through museums and encyclopedias, the organization of knowledge in both its diachronic and synchronic forms serves to collapse time and space. Geography and chronology become obsolete as relationships between images and objects …

Population 7 – Lyman Street Art Intervention, Carli Foster, Elizabeth Ann Englebreston, Eric Wojtowicz, Yiwei Huang

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

POPULATION 7 started as an experiment in the fall of 2011 as an Urban Art Laboratory “Art – Place – Tour” with the vision to make a tangible impact to the culture of public art in Springfield. At first sight art seems to be not existent in the public realm. We are searching for an organic, sustainable concept with the potential to grow from inside to outside. Our goal is to invite to a discussion about public art and art in general that is introduced through minimal but diverse, economical eventually temporary, site-responsive interventions. We see our art as personal …

M.F.A. Thesis Quest, Or, I Went Into The Wilderness And I Found Alec Baldwin, Steven Snell

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

I went into the wilderness and I found Alec Baldwin. This is not a lie. It is also a title for a video installation and this thesis. In it, I investigate three separate adventure-performances, providing a theoretical context for their existence, meaning, and relationship as a form of artistic practice. I call this practice ‘adventure-art’, using the term to describe a performance-based action in which the artist publically explores his or her reality through some type of physical adventure, search, quest, or challenge. It is an attempt to engage oneself and others at both at the physical and mediated levels, …

Letters To Anyone, Michelle L. Dickson

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Letters to Anyone is written as a parallel text to the body of work I’ve created during my time in graduate school, culminating in the installation almost‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐release.

This thesis deals with my personal narrative as a way to understand the ideas and concepts that my work is derived from. Specific topics include memory, the body, time, process, space, and change.

A Process Of Design: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Dennis R. Berfield Mr.

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

A collaborative process, when implemented for a theatrical production, not only reinforces a design team's ability to tell a story, it supports a artistically unified design that can be communicated easily to all members of a production team regardless of their production role. The information within this thesis is documentation of a collaborative process between the Scenic Designer and the production team for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater's production of The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Rachel Sheinkin with music and lyrics by William Finn. Preliminary design images, model photographs, Autodesk AutoCAD design plates, …

Yes, Probably, Hannah E B Richards

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This M.F.A. thesis paper and drawing installation deal with the physical relationship of the body to itself, and with the neurological wiring connecting the parts to each other and to the whole. In my drawing 10 Months/ 9 x 20 Feet, I work on a scale several times that of my own body. Issues explored include contingency, relationships, accumulation, parameters, play, record, time, duration, proprioception, metonymy, fragmentation, space, scale, sight, process, and drawing. Over ten months, I produced a single drawing measuring twenty feet across and nine feet tall. My body’s repetitive contorting in order to trace itself, in …

The Unfixedness Of It, Kerry O'Grady

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

My drawings contemplate the unfixed nature of my experience. I draw from a state of uncertainty about the relationship between self and space, between a moment of experience and the one that follows it. My process involves intuitive mark-making in which instances of perception are indeterminate and discontinuous. I draw from the experience of unhinged moments, from silence and stillness, and from the indefinable, inarticulable, interstitial moments of perception between those that can be concretely described.

The immediacy of drawing, the direct engagement with the mark on the surface, is central to my work. Intuitive mark-making is a way of …

Different Ways To Record Light, Ryan P. Feeney

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Different Ways to Record Light is a series of photographs, videos and objects that explore the affect that popular culture has on how I perceive, and make sense of the world around me. By using light as a thematic and metaphoric subject this work opens up a discourse about the role that images and technology play in our perceptual lives. This thesis paper will give a theoretical, contextual and historical framework for the concepts explored in my studio practice.

Into Another, Sarah N. Purnell

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Through a series of paintings, drawings, videos, and large-scale sculptures/installation, I intend to create an environment that explores relationships between the safe and the unsafe place, the sweet and the grotesque, the dream and the reality, and the remembered and the forgotten. I am investigating landscape and how it relates to the body, human relationships, memory, and status of being.

Staging Through Rituals: Directorial Exploration Of The Imaginary Invalid, Dora A. Arreola

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis describes how the experimental process of exploring ritual as a foundation for creating contemporary theater can be applied to staging a classical European play, in this case, Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, adapted by Constance Congdon. Based on research into the influences of Commedia Dell’ Arte in Molière’s plays, the directorial concept of “Mask and Duplicity” influenced all the artistic areas of the production and design (costume, sound, lighting and set). The process described includes the development of a physical vocabulary with the actors, exploring animal movements based on “The Dance of the Deer” (a hunting ritual from the …

Run Stitch Remembrance, Lyndsey N. Baldwin

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

In an effort to process my grief associated with the death of my grandmother, I created a series of drawings, documenting my daily life in Massachusetts. This body of work constitutes my thesis. In total, I made one thousand and sixty one drawings, each undergoing a series of identical, repeated processes, which represent the number of days lived there. The simplicity, detail and sheer volume of drawings in the installation chronicles a relatable story through complex means. Creating the drawings was a methodical act of remembrance, the practice allowing quiet reflection on each day and its respective history. This body …

Regalia And Repetition, Deborah I. Karpman

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

My thesis investigates some of the conceptual ideas related to my studio work, both in terms of theory and contemporary practice. This thesis focuses how the visual images formally operate, as well as the larger framework of discourse that surrounds my practice. In my work, the habitual, incessant process of cutting and extraction and the subsequent meticulous reconfiguring use the strategies of repetition and labor. These sustained, ongoing acts have the possibility to be generative or transformative rather than simply repetitive. This thesis also explores the found object, complicating the classification and knowledge systems of the source image with odd …

Hey, Whats Up?, Justin Kemp

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

My work does not aim to answer a question or solve any problems; it tries to activate a conversation around the content. I intend to keep things playful and entertaining because not only is that how I relate best to the subject, but I find it helps animate aspects of culture that people enjoy responding to and thinking about. Like “The Real World,” or Facebook, my work entertains me, but it has a way of slowing down certain aspects of life, letting someone take a breath, have a conversation and maybe LOL.

Vision And Contemplation: An Exploration Within The Medium, Mica Y. Pillemer

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis is an exploration of various issues concerning composition in painting. In it I take a step by step approach to advancing the compositional thought process. Within that exploration the central issues of painting are confronted and expanded upon.

Bang!, Kimberly C. Hennessy

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

BANG! is a thesis paper presented in conjunction with a visual art show that is made up of paintings, sculptures, and site specific installations. Primary ideas explored with the body of work are those of growth and expansion, energy, contradiction, excess, collection, play, drama, and nostalgia, specifically relating to color relationships and physical material.